Page 17 of Just One Little Bargain

Maureen Pritchett is probably already awake. She has a police scanner, a landline, and a group chat called “Neighborhood Watch” that includes forty-seven people and has nothing to do with actual crime prevention. I’m going to be her next target.

Friday the thirteenth strikes again.

I should have knocked on wood this morning. Should have thrown salt over my shoulder when I spilled it at breakfast. Should have called in sick to my own life.

The doorbell makes me jump.

I shuffle to the door in bare feet, trying to slow my breathing. When I pull it open, Chief Daniel Briggs is standing there, looking like he’d rather be literally anywhere else.

He’s a big guy. His dark hair has turned silver at the temples, and his jaw is so covered in permanent stubble that I don’t think he’s been fully clean-shaven since the nineties.

Behind him, Officer Lucas Vaughan slurps from a gas station coffee cup the size of a small bucket. He’s tall and lean, with sandy blond hair that’s perpetually mussed, implying zero effort and maximum commitment to not caring. He has the type of face that ages in reverse. Thirty years old and still getting mistaken for an intern, which I imagine served him poorly at the academy but serves him just fine now when he wants people to underestimate him. The slurping is obscenely loud in the quiet night, and Chief Briggs’s right eye twitches.

“Let me guess,” Daniel begins. “Supernatural incident?”

“How did you—”

“Maureen called in about ungodly howling from the woods behind her house last month. Pulled up a lunar calendar and everything to prove it only happens on the full moon. Mrs. Moore saw a ghost in her attic in July. And now you’re calling about . . .” He checks his notes. “A man who appeared out of nowhere to discuss Hell with you.”

My face heats instantly. “Dispatch told you that?”

“Linda told me that,” he corrects. “She also needed a minute to compose herself before she could relay the rest of the call.”

Perfect. The police department thinks I’m insane.

Granted, it’s not exactly a sprawling operation. Four officers, one chief, and a dispatcher who’s been at that desk longer than I’ve been alive. Linda fields every call, tracks the reports, and somehow knows more about this town than the people living in it. She’s also the woman I unloaded every unhinged detail on fifteen minutes ago because apparently adrenaline doesn’t come with a filter. She never once laughed. Which, in retrospect, took a level of restraint I could not have managed if our roles were reversed.

Lucas adjusts his grip on the coffee cup. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I mean it. People call in weird stuff all the time. Someone reported strange lights over the woods last year. We still don’t know what that was.” He grins at me. “Could’ve been anything. Aliens, demons, a really dedicated guy with a drone.”

“It was a drone,” Daniel says flatly.

“We never confirmed that.”

“Yes, we did, Vaughan.” Daniel rubs his temple before focusing on me again. “Can you describe the intruder?”

“Brown, curly hair, glasses, and . . . pale eyes with a violet tint.” I’m making this worse. “Dark jeans, button-down shirt, boots.”

“Violet eyes,” Daniel repeats without inflection.

“In certain light, yeah.”

“Uh-huh.” He writes something down. “Age?”

“Late twenties? Early thirties? I don’t know. I was busy panicking.”

“Height?”

“Taller than me. So basically, everyone.” My attempt at levity doesn’t land. “Six feet?”

Lucas leans in. “And he just broke into your house? Out of nowhere? For no reason?”

“He said my cat summoned him.”

“Your . . . cat?” Daniel clarifies.